


The Book of Lamentations

by drinkbloodlikewine, kyrilu



Series: Here I Am [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arson, Biblical References, Canon-Typical Violence, Epistolary, M/M, dark!Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 21:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1723439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"God cleansed His prophet by sending a seraphim who put an ember to his mouth. Embers and angels, embers and angels, palm to mouth, I don’t know if it means anything, but I keep thinking of you anyway."</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"Here’s your ember, prophet."</i></p><p> </p><p>Before the exodus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Book of Lamentations

You came near when I called you, and you said, "Do not fear."

**Lamentations 3:57**

 

* * *

 

_A letter arrives. It is of particular interest to no one, checked only to ensure it doesn’t contain anything more than paper, and is passed to him along with his morning medication._

_Written in a loose, looping script - black ink on off-white cotton._

 

Mine - 

The letters I’ve tried to write would have filled your cell to bursting by now. Each one a laceration, a scourging, and all gone now, all wrong. You see, I kept starting with an apology - for myself, for you, for where you are and what’s become of us.

But to apologize would mean that there’s something wrong with what happened.

The only things wrong with what happened are that you’re now there, and I’m now here, and he still lives.

All problems that we can fix.

So I thought that I’d start with praise, instead. Do you remember what you called yourself when you first wrote to me? My admirer - my bloody Valentine. I don’t have gifts to offer you yet, Valentine, but admirer - yes. I’ll take that title. Let me admire you the way you once admired me.

I can feel the way his skin broke beneath your knife, the blade slipping down between the bones of his arms, and I can feel the darkness that welled up hot out of him, covering your hands. How thrilling it must have been, to hear his throttled gasps and to see his blood pool beneath you, your feet washed clean by his wounds as you looked upon your great work.

By fire, by gun, by knife, by rope.

Did you spread your arms before him, triumphant over the devil laid low? You must have looked beautiful in that moment. They told me that even after you were shot, you tried to finish the job. How could I not lay praise at your feet for all that fierceness, all that tenacity! In all my unworthiness, oh mine, how could I not admire you and your acts in every way. You have made me to walk in darkness rather than light and I do it gladly now because when I walk in darkness it feels like you.

I miss you.

Not a night has passed in which I haven’t laid awake and thought of you. I see you behind my eyes, in the place I made for you inside myself, and I feel your palms against mine, your fingers in my hair. Your promises are like the sun against my skin, even still. Thoughts of you are the only things that warm me. I know it’s risky to reach out for you so soon when there could still be eyes watching but I can’t stand it anymore. Your hands are the only ones I want to feel and your mouth is the only one that moves me.

You must know how proud I am. You do, don’t you? Every day I die, thinking of you there, and every night I’m born again, learning what I have to do in order to uncage you. To offer myself up to you as you offered yourself to me - to burn like a flaming fire that consumes everything around it. For you, my champion. Tell me what you need and you’ll have it.

“He dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver.” Those who made themselves my enemies without cause hunted me like a bird, and so I let them think of me as wounded. I make the motions, weak and fluttering and frail, all broken wings and shuddering heart, and they’re misled by my struggle enough not to notice my talons.

They don’t know what I’ve become yet. To be fair, I’m not sure I know either, but I feel it in me, growing. They don’t see that I’ve become like a bear lying in wait - a lion in hiding. My claws are sharp and my teeth are strong. He senses it, of course - the shifting winds and the scent of blood (mine and yours and that which may yet be spilled). He knows my distraction display for what it is but he doesn’t know that I know he knows. He’ll see what he’s helped to create soon enough. As someone once said, it will be more fun than killing game in the forest, for man is the most dangerous game of all.

All things that can be destroyed can be rebuilt. All things that can be created can be destroyed.

I am rebuilding. I will destroy.

Wait for me,

yours

 

* * *

 

 

He lies still, the sun dappled across his face in patches of light and shadow. The grass is soft and newly grown and he runs his fingers through it and imagines. He imagines a life where he needn’t hide behind masks, a constant insecure fumbling to find the right one before someone notices. Where he can forget them all and learn to know his own face again, or maybe for the first time, held in the hands of the one who already knows it. A summer heat passes between their mouths and he arches into it, letting himself be subsumed in breathless relief and knowing that if his breath were to be taken by this one and never returned he would allow it, grant it eagerly and willingly to him, if he asked it.

He hears his voice called from far away, and when his eyes open again, his archangel has departed and beneath his hands rests a mahogany desk, smooth and lifeless. He places the pen back in its inkwell, taking a brief pleasure in folding the fine paper in even segments and sliding it into his coat pocket.

“Apologies, doctor,” Will responds, standing. “I hope you don’t mind that I used some of your paper. There’s something I needed to take care of.”

 

* * *

 

 

 _The rain is pounding on the prison rooftop, pitter patter pitter patter, and the other patients are strangely quiet, as if they're silenced by the storm. It's good weather to write, Matthew thinks, and he picks up the pencil stub and writes_ Dear Will. _The two words sound like an endearment in his head: Dear Will, Dear Will, Dear Will._  

_When he’s finished, he passes along the note to Barney._

 

Dear Will,

I miss you too. Isn’t it strange, your time institutionalized is over, but I want nothing more than everything to be as it was before? When I close my eyes I’m on the other side of the bars, watching for your smile. I pretend that you’re still there in the peripheral of my vision. 

I envy your imagination. I can come up with elaborate scenes, sometimes, you can see that in my victims, but I don’t have the depth or patience that you do. It’s boring. I wish that I had more paper so that I could continue sketching out the patterns of my unfinished tattoos, but I know there’s not a lot; I need to save it. I’ve prepared each and every scrap of paper for a letter, addressing them ‘Dear Will’, ‘Dear Will’, over and over again, because I wanted to write your name and capture that feeling of starting a letter anew, even if I’m only fooling myself.

I don’t know why you leave so many praises at my feet. I don’t warrant any of them. Don’t be proud. You’re the one who said that you felt that others tried to mold you into their expectations, and Dear Will, I think that everything that’s happened has only proven that I am not your angel.

It’s just another one of those stories. I was just reading one, before they put me in: There was a woman who had her lover kill her husband, out in the Louisiana swamps. They made songs out of it, but of course the two murderers were sent to the gallows. The lover had Jesus’ last words, from Luke, as his own: ‘Oh God in Heaven, forgive them for they know not what they do.’ Your poor Jack Crawford knew not what he did, did he? But it isn’t his fault. I wonder how many more lives the Chesapeake Ripper will take, because of my failure. He shouldn’t be out hunting. He shouldn’t. These grounds should be yours.

What do I need, Will? I need you to be free. You’re finally free. Go and play with your dogs, Mr. Graham. Go and dance around your devil, and then destroy him (I’m sorry that I won’t be there to see it, but I know that you will). Stretch out your wings and marvel at the color and span of them. You don’t have to linger behind, when it comes to this asylum, this prison, this doomed covenant, but I’m selfish and I also need you to still write to me, at the very least.

Yours,

Matthew

N.B. Yes, I think I was beautiful. But only because you made me so. 

N.B.2. My trial is coming up soon. They’ll pronounce me insane and put me here for life, I think. The Baltimore Vigilante, so easily dispatched, written off as a one-time freak show. They won’t remember my name, will they?

N.B.3. Dear builder, make me a place where I can still stay with you, even in here.

  

* * *

 

 

Dear Matthew, 

You talk about freedom but there’s no such thing yet, only new cages and new constraints. I can’t touch these bars but they’re there as clear as day. You tell me not to linger but can I go forward when my heart is here? There is no freedom with his hands wrapped around my neck. There is no freedom without the one who was pierced for my transgressions.

Crawford did what he had to do, with the evidence he has. If I knew only what he knew I’d have done the same. I can’t blame the deceived for their deception, when it’s the devil himself whispering in their ear, but neither does it make your bondage just or their pronouncements right.

They called me insane, too - those who in the same breath would call themselves my friends.

Unstable, they said. 

It was the kindest word they could find.

Don’t envy the things I carry inside me, the memories that grow and pierce like mistletoe. I’m plagued with visions of horrors uncommitted and I’m haunted by the words of your promises unfulfilled. Not the oath you swore about him - he’ll have his judgment yet - but when you swore that there would never be a last time for us.

“When this is over, we'll be free.”

I’ve built a place for you but it’s only your ghost that lives there until you come back to me. I feel you on the outskirts of my being, like a shadow just out of sight, and I want to reach for you and pull you close and damn them all for what they’ve done to you. To me. To us.

So help me again, though it feels cruel to ask more of you than you’ve already given. I know that imagining is hard, your mind too fast to settle for too long, but try for me. You’ve walked these steps before, with me on the way to my own trial.

(I still remember how you freed my hair from the buckles of that mask, and how you asked me if the straps were too tight when you cinched them - you remember, too, don’t you?)

Now, instead put yourself into the day of your trial. Every second, every breath or footstep, from the moment you wake up. The way the rough fabric feels against your skin as you put your coveralls on, the way the metal cuffs are cold around your wrists. Breathe, now, as they lay a hand on your shoulder to lead you. See the uneven stone walls as they remove you from the clattering metal cell and you set your feet on the smooth tile floors. The way the van rumbles. The way the security guard nods to the orderly as you enter the courthouse. There’s nothing too small to notice.

The same attention you paid to your victims - every stitch in alignment - give me that now. Look at all the parts and all the pieces and find the one that doesn’t fit. The blood on your shirt. The lipstick on your neck. The scent of lavender still clinging to your hands. Something isn’t organized. There’s a piece that doesn’t fit. Find the stitch that’s out of place as you go through the day of your trial.

And when you’ve found it, bring it to me.

Our story’s only started. You wrote the first chapter - I’ll write the next.

Yours,

Will

 

* * *

 

 

Dear Will, 

Do you recall when I compared us to reconciliation - a priest and a penitent - at the confessional? I can’t stop thinking about it now; it seems very apt, even in your absence. If only they’d let me have my mother’s old rosary.

“My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things.” Is this forgiveness, Will? Am I absolved? I don’t think it could be fixed as easily like this.

To return to our Isaiah, God cleansed His prophet by sending a seraphim who put an ember to his mouth. Embers and angels, embers and angels, palm to mouth, I don’t know if it means anything, but I keep thinking of you anyway. Maybe that’s what we are in the end - you are an angel and I am a prophet. Albeit a failed prophet, one whom the mantle ‘martyrdom’ can’t apply to, because that’s too glorious, too sacred.

‘Insane’, ‘unstable.’ They can call you whatever they want, but they truly don’t realize how you _know_ them, the extent of your abilities, a summation of the things that they don’t want to look at, so they make you look instead. I wish I could be there to tell you that you’re safe. I wish I could be there to kill him for you.

I can watch. I can remember. It’s not hard at all. Of everything that I’ve been and tried to be, I will always remain a device that was meant to listen.

This hospital used to be mine. I’ve spent idle hours wondering where the best place to start a fire would be, how each exit should be barricaded, how the flames would ripple from cell to cell, and how the screams would echo. Sometimes I used to imagine tampering with the meds: switching up labels and IV bags, arbitrary little mistakes, but I suppose I’m not a poisoner at heart.

And the courthouse used to be mine, too - mine and Andy Sykes’, once upon a time. I know each and every face of the stone angels guarding the front. This is where false judgment occurs.

The courthouse. It’s where we began. The flakes of blood and skin falling from the envelope, the ear tumbling down. My ode and hymn to you.

If I truly have your forgiveness...it’s a good place to pick up again. If I don’t, I can stay. It’s all right. “Whoever is marked for death, to death; whoever is marked for the sword, to the sword; whoever is marked for famine, to famine; whoever is marked for captivity, for captivity.”

Yours,

Matthew

N.B. I’m about to be taken away right now for my pre-trial. I’ll look for you, or anything you leave me, or anything that will mean release. What is it, Will? Is it fire? Give me a single match and I can turn the courthouse into a pyre. Give me a single match and I’ll burn the world for you.

N.B.2. It’s funny. If this trial had happened centuries ago, they would’ve hanged me. I wonder if I would have been one of those where the rope snapped and I was miraculously saved, if only a while, or maybe I would be one of those damned who struggled for excruciating minutes while a crowd listened for my fading heartbeats. Would they have written ballads about me, then? Now I suppose we have to write our own ballads.

 

* * *

 

 

 _There are many pages folded together - some marked with the familiar difficult to read script, some blank but for a small notation of ‘for your art’. The perfunctory check of contents with quick fingers yields only the firm creases of paper, and so the orderly passes it along._  

Matthew, 

Do you know how glad I am to hear your confession? 

Not because I hold you accountable - the devil’s deeds aren’t yours to claim - but because of the pleasure in seeing your words in my hands again. Of holding your poetry and knowing you’re still alive to write it. How quickly it all could have ended if the shot had veered left.

Sometimes I imagine that even when we’re finally together, we’ll still be wrapped in vows of silence, writing notes to each other rather than speaking. Maybe we won’t even need that, and instead we’ll write with our fingers on each others’ skin everything we could want to say in words. If you need me to have your repentance, I’ll hear it. If you need to hear my forgiveness, you’ll have it.

We’ll have all the time in the world to write our own hymns together once we’re free.

I’ve packed a bag and some other things and some pictures even and it’s all in the car but it’s not getting easier. Last night I sat in the driver’s seat and I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The only comforts I’ve ever known are here - my home, my dogs. I lay awake all night thinking about them, and it hurts like my ribs are being cracked wide open and all my organs are laid bare.

Will they stay together, or be separated? Will they wonder where I’ve gone again, or when I’m coming back? Will they look for me, or will they forget about me? I hope they do. I hope they forget all about me and are happy together somewhere safe without me. They trusted me when no one else did and the thought of leaving them and the safe little home that we made in the woods hurts so bad, Matt, it hurts so fucking bad but then I look at those woods and I know he’s there, watching and waiting to devour it all.

Do you know the story of the Judgment of Solomon? Two mothers, one false and one true, each fighting over a baby they claimed to be their own. King Solomon decreed the child be cut in half so each would have their share, and while the false mother agreed to split the child in two, the true mother relinquished her own child rather than watch him die.

I have to let go. I have to let go or he’ll destroy it all.

You extinguished your love of Andy for me. I can extinguish old loves, too.

Your next hearing is a week from today. A distraction is better than destruction but we have to move fast while there’s enough confusion to cloud our trail. Tell me where to be and I’ll be there. Tell me what to bring and you’ll have it.

I wonder if the seraphim felt the same fear I do.

Here’s your ember, prophet. 

I’ll be waiting.

Yours,

Will

 

_The handwriting becomes harder to read towards the end, more erratic, more unsteady - nervous quickness in the grip of the expensive pen. Hidden in the folds of the paper - for your art, they read - is a wooden match._

 

* * *

 

 

Dear Will, 

I’m sorry about your dogs. I’m so sorry. They make you smile, don’t they? And I liked that one who sat in my lap.

I have something to promise you. Something that I will deliver on, this time. I think one day, we’ll have a safe little house of our own, with dogs running about. We can find a place like that, Will, even if it seems impossible, laughable, now, but we’ll find it. There will be bloodshed and sweat along the way, but one day you’ll wake up in our home, and I’ll be by your side, and you’ll know that it was worth it. Everything was worth it: your devil and your fear and your captivity and your flight. We’ll have all the time in the world.

I know that story about Solomon. I also know the Binding of Isaac, where God demanded that Abraham sacrifice his son to prove his loyalty to Him. He didn’t take Isaac. It was a test. Of course, there still had to be a sacrifice, and Abraham offered a ram in his son’s place. Oh Will, the things that you love won’t truly be taken away, and you’ll find them again with me. Think of me as the angel who stilled Abraham’s hand before it was too late (in this scenario, I suppose I’m the angel now). I’m here. Don’t worry.

Breathe, Will. Sleep.

I need you to think back to the mechanism I set up when I put Andy’s body on the antlers. I need you to build it. I know you can build, in ways that aren’t just metaphor - you’re a fisherman, aren’t you, from the south? I trust that you’re good with your hands and with tools. You know where you can find the file. You know that you’ve got the means to make it. All you have to do is find a place to put it, someplace where I can get it, and I’ll strike the match myself. You have to make sure that there’s an exit open for us - it has to be destructive, but not so much so that we’ll be caught by the inferno ourselves.

You’ve been in the courthouse before. Think. Wait. I know that I promised that I could burn the world with a single match, but I can’t do this alone.

Yours,

Matthew

N.B. Thank you. I have your ember in my palm right now, and it feels like it’s already burning. I set so many fires when I was younger, Will. One day I’ll tell you about all of them.

 

* * *

 

 

Although he keeps each piece separate on his workbench, invisible barriers between them, his mind can’t help but see what they are destined to become in his hands. A weight-sensitive plate that triggers a mechanism to combine two potentially combustible accelerants, and to which the introduction of a flammable catalyst will create an exothermic chemical reaction. Will repeats the words like a mantra but as he holds the fine wires in his fingers, he can’t pretend not to know precisely what he’s creating.

His head sings with a high keening from the night before, when he finally drank himself to sleep after days of insomnia, and the pain pulses behind his eyes like a heartbeat. He decides to leave a message for Zeller, letting him know he has to go out of town very suddenly, and could you come by and take care of the dogs, please, I left them food for another day and they can still get outside through the dog door but they really need someone to come take care of them because I’m not sure when I’ll be back and it would mean so much if you would look after them, please, just look after them and make sure they’re all okay.

Will drops his phone on the bed and wonders if the message sounds like evidence.

When he gets in the car he is very still for a long time, looking at the house, very still until he can’t be still anymore and convulses, choking on guilt. He grips the wheel until his knuckles go white and has to stop himself from going back, over and over. Weak, he calls himself, each time he reaches for the door handle. Selfish.

By the time Will arrives at the courthouse and shows his credentials, he’s all but sleepwalking. The defendants’ waiting room has a door to the hall that he shuts firmly behind him, and a door to the parking lot for easy transport from corrections. He disconnects the cheap security camera with a clumsy tug of a wire, and thinks an apology at the beleaguered houseplant struggling to grow towards the small barred window that he remembered from waiting here himself.

Replace the plant’s water with accelerant. Conceal the vial of catalyzing agent in the frail leaves. Yellow to blue, white to red, blue and red to plate to table and there he rests a Bible. In a fit of pique, he opens it to Isaiah, fingers brushing soft against the fragile pages, and underlines verses 6:2-6:4. A sign for the prophet from the seraphim, to know that his ember is needed.

Will exits through the same door that will be used to bring Matthew in. He slumps against the wall to wait, shivering as a coarse autumn breeze rustles his hair and listening to the blood rush through him like a hollow drumming of wings. Behind his closed eyes, visions of his own personal Zion laid low, verses begging relief that may not be granted, hymns written in pain and blood.

 _They will fight against you but will not overcome you,_ he remembers, _for I am with you and will rescue you._

 

* * *

 

 

Matthew keeps the match in his fist. He is careful to be gentle - he has to make sure that he won’t snap it into pieces, putting enough pressure to make it crack. He’s done that before, on edge, breaking matches into fragments, and cursing under his breath when he felt the first splinter. He has to be careful. He has to concentrate. 

Barney leads him up the courthouse steps and heads for the entrance for defendants. Matthew is bound, but not as bound as Will was. He whispers a prayer to the stone angels guarding the building, a prayer his mother taught him, binding their fingers together with her rosary: _Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom His love commits me here. Ever this day be at my side, to light, and guard, to rule, and guide_.

He sees it.

Quickly, Matthew lets the match stick out from between his still-handcuffed fingers, and lets it drag against the mechanism in the door. With this strike, he completes his prayer with a soft, “Amen.” It’s a motion that Barney doesn’t notice, the spark too little, the movement just a jerk of muscle.

This is ignition. It is not an instant explosion, unlike Andy’s house, and instead a crawl of flames.

_Very good, Will._

They are several steps inside the courthouse when the flames start to catch, climbing up the walls. The smoke is like a balm, a fragrance of something healing, and Matthew wants to stop and inhale. This is his forte; this is his mania; this is his burning bush; this is what can fill in his missing spaces with light and conflagration. He wants to bring the blackened tip of the match in his hand and taste it.

(Matthew would’ve taken up smoking if he hadn’t realized there was too much of a temptation to leave unextinguished cigarette butts on the ground, in flammable areas, just to see what would happen next. The word _arson_ almost seems like it has the Latin word _ars_ in it - art - but that’s not quite true, yet it’s still beautiful anyway.)

The smoke alarms are blaring. Pandemonium sets in - it seems as if there’s a cascade of multicolored suits in shades of black and gray and blue, people running, rushing. Matthew easily breaks apart from Barney, losing him, ducking into a hallway.

He raises his face to the ceiling, mouth half-open to taste the smoke. The old hunger is back and he is half-caught in a trance. He wonders how many different ways a person could die in this building. He wonders if the stone angels will be licked by the fire, will be corroded over and over again until they’re swallowed up. God would let these angels be eaten by fire, he thinks.

No - Will. He has to look for Will.

 

* * *

 

 

The alarms reach his ears before the smell of smoke. He wonders if he fell asleep standing - if the compounded days of desperately drinking away insomnia finally caught up with him - but when he doesn’t see the prison transport van in the lot, all he can do is laugh. 

Of course they’d bring him through the front. He’s not as dangerous as Will Graham, serial murderer, cannibal, Ripper. Doesn't pose the same risk to regular people. No need to lash Matthew Brown to a fucking gurney and wheel him in through the back -

Matt. He has to find Matt.

_(there'll be plenty of time for self-abasement later, he assures himself)_

He swipes his card through the door and winces at the heat already filling the insulated space, no open windows here, no freedom for people or for air, and emerges out into the hall.

It would be a lie to say he doesn't feel a moment of bitter pleasure to see the way their flames have grown like ivy along the walls, and he takes a breath to consider what this says about the current state of his life. His eyes are dry with acrid pain as he watches the light move in waves up towards the ceiling, until he's nearly knocked over by someone hurrying to escape. The pressure around him reminds him briefly of being in the river, a ceaseless rush of movement around his still form, as if the stream had become fire and humanity rather than water.

Downstream. Always fish downstream because the fish face towards the current, and you want them to see your lure.

He turns to follow the crush of lawyers and desk clerks and guards and visitors and - there, standing as still as stone, he sees Matthew. The grey jumpsuit makes him look born of smoke, hauntingly calm amidst the chaos, with that strange secret smile borne by saints and sinners alike. Will shoves past a man in a suit and his fingers lick against Matthew’s skin like flames and he snares him hard by the wrist, pulling him back upstream into the flow of bodies, any words between them lost to the wailing alarms. He feels his hair begin to singe as he ducks back through into the room he came from, raised by the heat like redemption drawing near.

Eyes watering, he nearly drops the card to get back outside, fumbling with shaking hands before realizing that even they wouldn't leave the doors locked during a fire. With a muttered curse he pushes it open with his shoulder and emerges out into the back lot, finally letting go of Matthew's wrist. A rancid cough tears itself from his lungs and he rips his coat free of his shoulders, throwing it over Matthew’s arms to hide his handcuffs.

He hopes he remembered to charge the Dremel before he left.

He hopes he remembered to _bring_ the fucking Dremel.

"Car," Will rasps, voice scorched from filling his lungs with immolation, his veins with ash. He hurries across the lot, between other cars trying to escape, and is grateful that he thought past his own inner fog enough to leave the doors unlocked. He slides in and pushes Matthew's door open for him, watching the rearview mirror as he throws on his belt and shoves the keys into the ignition.

The sirens are louder now, outside the building as well as inside, and he sees a swarm of swirling lights approaching the lot atop fire trucks. Matthew's barely had time to close the door when Will pulls out of the parking spot at an easy speed, an outwardly calm maneuver betrayed by how deeply he holds his breath, how pale he's gone, and how badly his hands are shaking against the wheel.

Focused. Collected. A cautious driver making a reasonable exit from a scene of panic.

Will wonders how long he should drive before he pulls over to throw up. 


End file.
